UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
MT116 LINEAR ALGEBRA AND PROBABILITY FOR ENGINEERING — 2019 TUTORIAL 3/AM

1. Prove that if A1 ⊂ A2 , then P (A1 ) ≤ P (A2 ).

2. Show that for every event A, 0 ≤ P (A) ≤ 1 and P (∅) = 0.
3. Prove that if A0 is the complement of A, then P (A0 ) = 1 − P (A).
4. Consider tossing a coin twice. Let A be the event ”at least one tail occurs” and B the event
”the second toss results in a head”. Find the events
(i) A ∩ B (ii) A ∪ B (iii) A − B (iv) A0
5. A single die is tossed once. Find the probability of a 3 or 6 turning up.
6. A ball is drawn at random from a box containing 8 red balls, 17 white balls, and 9 blue balls.
Determine the probability that it is
(i) white, (ii) not blue, (iii) red or blue, (iv) neither white nor red.
7. A card is picked from a deck of 52 playing cards, without replacement, and then another one
is picked. What is the probability of picking (i) two red cards, (ii) one of each colour.
8. A die is loaded in such a way that each odd number is twice likely to occur as each even
number. Find P (G), where G is the event that a number greater than 3 occurs on a single
roll of the die.
9. Given two events A and B, such that P (A) = 0.3 and P (A ∩ B) = 0.1. Find the minimum
and maximum possible values of the conditional probability P (A | B).
10. Consider three events A, B and C for which A and C are independent, and B and C are
mutually exclusive. You are given the probabilities P (A) = 0.3, P (B) = 0.5, P (C) = 0.2 and
P (A ∩ B) = 0.1. Find the probability that none of A, B or C occurs.
11. A coin is flipped twice. What is the conditional probability that both flips result in heads,
given that the first flip does?
12. M and N are two events such that P (M | N ) = 0.3, P (N ) = 0.25, P (M ) = 0.1. Find
(i) P (N | M ) (ii) P (M ∩ N ) (iii) P (M ∪ N )
13. Prove that, if A1 , A2 , A3 are any three events, then

P (A1 ∪A2 ∪A3 ) = P (A1 )+P (A2 )+P (A3 )−P (A1 ∩A2 )−P (A2 ∩A3 )−P (A3 ∩A1 )+P (A1 ∩A2 ∩A3 ).

14. For any two events A and B, show that P (A ∩ B) ≥ 1 − P (A0 ) − P (B 0 ).

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15. A computer program generates random questions in arithmetic that children have to answer
within a fixed time. The probability of the first question being answered correctly is 0.8.
Whenever a question is answered correctly, the next question generated is more difficult, and
the probability of a correct answer being given is reduced by 0.1. Whenever a question is
answered wrongly, the next question is of the same standard, and the probability of a correct
answer being given remains unchanged.
(i) Find the probability that the second question is answered correctly.
(ii) By extending the tree diagram, or otherwise, find the probability that the second question
is answered correctly given that the third question is answered correctly.
16. A certain test for HIV infection has a probability of 0.95 of testing positive when a patient
is infected and a probability of 0.1 of testing positive when a patient is not infected. Given
an area with 40% HIV infection, find the probability that a patient is infected is he/she has
tested positive.

17. The probability that a car accident is due to faulty brakes is 0.02, the probability that a car
accident is correctly attributed to faulty brakes is 0.95, and the probability that a car accident
is incorrectly attributed to faulty brakes is 0.01. Calculate the probability that a car accident
which is attributed to faulty brakes was due to faulty brakes.
18. In a certain factory there are two machines producing the same brand of light bulbs. The
first machine produces 10% and the second machine produces 90% of the bulbs. Let the
probability that the first machine turns out a defective light bulb be 1% and the probability
that the second machine turns out a defective light bulb be 5%.
(i) What is the probability that a bulb drawn at random from the production line is defective.
(ii) Given that a bulb is defective, what is the probability that it was produced by the first
machine.
(iii) Given that a bulb is not defective, find the probability that it was produced by a second
machine.